Clouds on Wednesday. Before it got so dang cold!
Oh, it has been a long week and I am so very tired. I’m busy at work, and I’m busy at home. As usual, I find myself overcommitted, although at 32 years old I am starting to simply accept this as part of who I am. (And every so often, remember that I can’t do everything.) I can’t wait to get home from work today and crash on the couch for a few hours. PLUS, it’s a three-day weekend! Perhaps by Monday I’ll have recovered from my sleep deprivation enough to get some things done. And with that in mind, here are three very housewife-ish questions…
First: crock pots. Last night I went to “recipe club” for the first time and the theme was crock pot recipes. (Side note: Jose says I am in a lot of “girl clubs,” which makes me laugh.) I have never owned a crock pot and thus have never made anything in a crock pot, so I borrowed a recipe book from Kelly and a crock pot from Melissa and got to work. I chose coconut chicken curry because, well, it sounded good. And all things considered it did turn out ok — I liked the taste, but not the appearance. The main ingredients were chicken, coconut milk, chicken broth, onions, and potatoes. Realize that those things are all very…BEIGE. So while it tasted good, it looked like beige mush. Hmm.
But my question is this: how do you plan ahead for crock pot recipes? I always thought you could just leave them on the counter all day and voila. A lot of the recipes call for cooking 6-8 hours which seems fine…until I realized that when you add up driving to work, being at work for 8 hours, taking a lunch break, driving home, and possibly even running an errand or two on my way home? Well, that’s 9 hours in the best case scenario, and usually more like 10 or 11. Plus, we don’t eat as soon as we get home either. It’s often 7:00 or 8:00, after post-work runs and other things, that we sit down to eat. So the obvious solution seemed to be putting things in the crock pot and setting it on a timer to start a little later in the day — but a lot of the dishes have meat and you can’t very well leave raw chicken sitting at room temperature for hours. So that’s out.
I worked a short day on Wednesday thanks to long days the rest of the week, so it worked out this time around. But what about the future? The girls last night told me they just leave it on low for longer than the recipe says and it turns out fine, so I guess that’s the only real solution.
Second: how would you add light to our bonus room? This photo was taken during the day so it looks bright thanks to windows in the stairwell and three huge windows along the back wall. But at night, there is only one small, dim light on the ceiling (that you can’t see in this photo). There’s a table lamp there too, but it’s not plugged in because that would involve running a plug straight across the carpet. Which is the crux of the issue: the outlets are along the walls, obviously, but the size of the room means the furniture floats in the middle. So what are my options? Get a bigger, brighter ceiling light fixture? (Would some kind of large pendant light look dumb in a bonus room?) Get one or two tall lamps and just put them in the corners of the room? Or is there some other solution I haven’t thought of?
Third: master bedroom paint colors. We have a large splotch of green on the wall (which is mostly covered by the mirror atop my dresser; this photo was taken when we first moved in and the furniture hadn’t been delivered yet) and planned to go with this color, but suddenly I’m having second thoughts. The ceiling arches up in the middle to something like 13 or 14 feet (see the photo from when things were still under construction, with Katie and Joel handy for perspective!), so it is a large room with a lot of wall space . I’m worried it may be a little TOO green for the whole room. Anybody have a nice light green to recommend?
On the Crock Pot – some models have an automatic timer, and they’ll eventually switch to “warm” after a certain amount of time. I love mine like this, and I just turn it on when I leave in the AM, set the timer, and the “warm” setting keeps the food warm once it’s done cooking.
Alternatively, buy an outlet timer (like this one:http://www.amazon.com/Intermatic-Appliance-Security-TN111C-Settings/dp/B00002N5FI/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1295027395&sr=8-7 – I don’t like the digital ones – they’re too hard to figure out). Set it to turn the Crock Pot off at the required time and start cooking immediately, eliminating the raw food sitting out bit. There should be enough volume and heat in there to keep the food decently warm for an hour or two.
Lastly, leaving it on low for an extra hour or two definitely won’t hurt anything. It’s hard to overcook something on low if the Crock Pot is filled apporpriately. (I once underfilled a Crock Pot with chili and let it cook on low overnight. It wasn’t pretty.)
Also, get this book (or one like it): http://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Cooker-Recipes-Better-Gardens/dp/0696215462/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295027508&sr=1-1 My mom got it for me several years ago and it has all sorts of good stuff in there.
1. Nick has a Crock Pot and he loves it — but I never have understood the appeal because everything that comes out of it does, indeed, looks like porridge or gruel or dog food. Great for stews and slow cooking BBQ, I suppose, but for presentation I prefer other preparation methods.
2. Since your bonus room appears to be on the second floor, do you have attic access to the ceiling above? My vote would be installing recessed can lights in a pattern that meets your illumination needs and putting them on a dimmer so you can have it bright when you need good working or reading light and dim when you need mood light. If cutting all those holes in the ceiling and running new wiring is too ambitious, or if you don’t have access to the back of the ceiling, then a track light may be your best bet. We were sick and tired of installing and wiring can lights, so we put a track light in a room that needed more (and better distributed) light — I think the track is a better option than a large pendant — the profile will be closer to the ceiling and less obtrusive, and you can aim the lights where you need them, and you can usually add on a second track and more heads if need be…
3. You can’t go wrong with taupe!
We have this slow cooker book: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Mothers-Slow-Cooker-Cookbook/dp/1558322450/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295038387&sr=8-1
Some of the things we tried have been awesome and some are so-so. It’s not so much a “set it and forget it” book, so some of the recipes require some work before or after, but it does give a lot of good tips.
I’m picky with what we make in there because I don’t like the gruel effect. (Unless we’re making breakfast cereal – crock-pot oatmeal is really good!)
Tomato based things tend to turn out better, in my mind.
A favorite is to put a whole chicken in (with salt and pepper) and just let it cook all day on low. It turns out great! Also, pulled pork or italian beef are great non-mushy choices.
That green looks a bit dark. You have more light than we do, but I always want my house to be brighter.
For the rec room or bonus room or whatever, how about track lighting of some kind?
Track lighting or can lights isn’t a bad idea. I guess I hadn’t considered that because I don’t think we’d put those in ourselves. Neither one of us is particularly handy, and I don’t know if I’d trust myself with electrical stuff without past experience. I think I could probably replace the current light fixture with something else, but not sure about installing new stuff. We could always hire someone to do it though…
Chris, come down for a visit and fix up my house! 😉
Lighting, hmm. Halogen lights were great in the 90s for reflecting bright light off of a ceiling or wall. Maybe they make superbright LEDs that do the same thing? That lets you use your wall outlets.
If you’re going to hire someone anyway, you could do a skylight or solar tubes. We have both in our house and they make things a LOT brighter. On the otherhand, we have a water leak around one of our skylights so make sure they get sealed well!! And it would probably be more expensive than track lighting or cans because you have to cut a hole in the roof.
I think the lighting for your upstairs needs pot lights. I have no idea what kind of prep is required for these. You’d want to get the kind that you can dim so you can control the light level for movies.
I use the crock pot once every couple of weeks. As everyone said, it’s okay to let stuff cook longer if the cooker is on low. There’s a great blog, http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/, that has some great recipes. Try the chicken with the white wine vinegar and brown sugar – yummy!
i would have much preferred a beige mush over my purple chili mush :)http://phenomenological.net/blog/?p=44